One Hour One Life Forums

a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building

You are not logged in.

#1 2019-10-24 19:59:45

fug
Moderator
Registered: 2019-08-21
Posts: 1,130

What this specific arc has taught us.

-You have to be quick if you want your town in a nice spot.

All six wells were created within 30 minutes due to only focusing on making wells and nothing else. All six wells are along the west side of the map with the last one being 80 units east of the southern most well.

-You don't need a lot of natural resources to make a place super successful.

One of the two or three functional towns on the server was created in a swamp with one clay pit. People had to specifically run clay in from far away to get the basics for extra plates and bowls. Natural food ran out pretty quickly and it was up to players to feed and tend to themselves.


-The rift can definitely be smaller than it is now and still be manageable.

As someone who doesn't really like the rift it's definitely feasible for the thing to be quite a bit smaller than it already is. As long as item spawns were adjusted to take into account the smaller size it could probably be smaller than the original box. We're funny enough seeing some troll waste their time trying to grief clay and flat rocks due to the overabundance out in the wild east.

-Spring tap out is potentially too far or too close.

Either the tap out range needs to be larger to prevent another west side style arc (basically makes it harder for someone to solo pick all the town locations) or needs to be smaller to encourage towns to be close to each other. Kind of sad we got the tapped out option + the limited wells in the same update as otherwise this would have been a really wonky arc.

I'm sure there's more to think about considering the arc hasn't ended but at least this has been one of the more interesting ones as of late.


Worlds oldest SID baby.

Offline

#2 2019-10-24 20:10:21

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,801

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

Great observations here.  Thanks for writing this up.


I did consider simply making the tapout radius larger and NOT having a limit count.

The problem with that is this:  to make the radius large enough to effectively limit wells to a suitably small number, the radius needs to be quite large.  With a large radius like that, towns will be forced to be far apart, which isn't so great.  Furthermore, once a few wells are built, it will be much harder, and require a lot of roaming, to find the remaining spring heads.

Maybe these problems are better than the possibility for one fast person to dig all the wells in one spot?

I definitely am not thrilled about them all getting built in 30 minutes....

Offline

#3 2019-10-24 20:15:44

antking:]#
Member
Registered: 2018-12-29
Posts: 579

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Great observations here.  Thanks for writing this up.


I did consider simply making the tapout radius larger and NOT having a limit count.

The problem with that is this:  to make the radius large enough to effectively limit wells to a suitably small number, the radius needs to be quite large.  With a large radius like that, towns will be forced to be far apart, which isn't so great.  Furthermore, once a few wells are built, it will be much harder, and require a lot of roaming, to find the remaining spring heads.

Maybe these problems are better than the possibility for one fast person to dig all the wells in one spot?

I definitely am not thrilled about them all getting built in 30 minutes....

you have to rember that their are multiple eves each trying to get a town to succeed, so the first thing they will make is a shovel, and then a well, and the pressure will be on for sure because their is a count down once the 6th well is built any eve camps are not turning into towns.... that's why the well were made in such a short time


"hear how the wind begins to whisper, but now it screams at me" said ashe
"I remember it from a Life I never Lived" said Peaches
"Now Chad don't invest in Asian markets" said Chad's Mom
Herry the man who cheated death

Offline

#4 2019-10-24 20:18:52

StrongForce
Member
Registered: 2018-03-09
Posts: 474

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

What if upgrading the well increased the radius


Baby dance!!

Offline

#5 2019-10-24 20:40:00

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,801

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

Yes, this is possible too.

However, then we have another problem:

A more advanced well, with a larger radius, will need to "tap out" a more primitive well nearby.  That makes a lot of sense, actually, but I can imagine it being pretty dispiriting to the victim camp.  You get a village going, and then your well goes dry?

Anyway, then it would just push the "race" one step further up the tree.

I suppose it could work this way and go all the way up.  Until eventually, there are only 3 diesel pumps on the map, and all the rest are tapped out.

Still, I think people would rather have the disappointment happen earlier rather than later....

Offline

#6 2019-10-24 20:47:59

antking:]#
Member
Registered: 2018-12-29
Posts: 579

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

StrongForce wrote:

What if upgrading the well increased the radius

would the radius grow with every upgrade? and what would the final radius be?


"hear how the wind begins to whisper, but now it screams at me" said ashe
"I remember it from a Life I never Lived" said Peaches
"Now Chad don't invest in Asian markets" said Chad's Mom
Herry the man who cheated death

Offline

#7 2019-10-24 20:53:22

fug
Moderator
Registered: 2019-08-21
Posts: 1,130

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

I mean it's definitely problematic to have one player wipe all the springs out on the map before anyone else was able to get to the point of making their own well. However, is it really worth fixing if this isn't done every arc? I'm sure speedrunning wells will either get old, people will catch on and also start speedrunning wells so it won't be that big of a problem forever. While higher tech wells could potentially tap lower tiers it would feel awful to finally get your camp running and need to instantly upgrade due to some unknown force around you upgrading their well.

This also opens up the question of why keep the Eve window open so long if all the wells are tapped within the first hour or so of play? I understand why its open as long as it is before this update but feasibly after the first 30 minutes of this arc you had to go west and join a collective or spend your time starting a camp that had a 99% failure rate. If players were truly playing for lineages at this point you would have seen fences up around the few available wells and a bunch of floundering Eves trying to struggle as nomads until they eventually all died out when the Eve window closed.

So to reiterate: It's probably bad for a single person to be able to mark all the town sites and it's even worse that this can be done within 30 minutes of the game start even if I can't see this constantly happening due to when arcs start. Eve window should probably be a bit shorter as in the current form of the game you can't make a viable camp after all the wells are created which just leads to Eves having to join villages/cities/camps instead of making their own claim to fame somewhere. Spreading the tap out decreases likelihood of seeing other villages but lowering the tap has the inverse effect of allowing a solo player to claim all the wells even quicker.

At least this whole thing made the arc interesting.

Last edited by fug (2019-10-24 20:54:04)


Worlds oldest SID baby.

Offline

#8 2019-10-24 21:57:25

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,801

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

Yeah, the Eve window is open for so long for old and outdated reasons.

Families were dying out quickly, so I left the window open longer to let "good" families develop.  That helped somewhat, but it was much more important to tweak the baby distribution to keep families alive.

So maybe the Eve window can now be much shorter....

Offline

#9 2019-10-25 00:29:34

TitaniaDioxide
Member
Registered: 2019-09-18
Posts: 19

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

Hey, Jason, what if the radius increased with each step, but didn't tap out prior wells immediately?

Imagine, you have two wells, say, 200 squares apart.  Each well is built to being a Newcomen, and taps out 160 tiles around it.  Town A upgrades to kerosene, and that expands the radius to 200.

Town B doesn't immediately lose its water supply, but some indicator on the well shows that it's no longer upgradeable.  They have a little bit of time and water left to decide what to do - do they go attack the other town to take it over?  Do they try to disperse amongst all remaining towns?  Do they try to find another well spot and rush to diesel? 



Some additional options with respect to this:

- Make it so wells are downgradable, and therefore decreases the tapout radius.  This would probably need to be balanced (maybe only downgradable by an elder and child together, like a fence, and several downgrade/upgrade cycles taps out your well and all wells at the lower level's radius?), and probably has griefing possibilities that I haven't thought of.  This could make raids to downgrade another town's well advantageous to you (maybe not what we want)
- Add a way to continue getting water even when it's upgradable, but at lower quantity
- Add more intermediate/late game well types, and make it so one town can upgrade twice and take the water source back
- Force an intentional slowdown, and make it so that upgrading first puts you at a disadvantage, such that a well in your tapout radius will tapout your well when they upgrade. So if Town A upgrades first, Town B can upgrade to the same level as Town A, and taps out Town A's well.  And if Town B managed to tapout Town C, and Town C upgrades, then Town B loses its water.

Offline

#10 2019-10-25 13:35:35

pein
Member
Registered: 2018-03-31
Posts: 4,335

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

I mean you basically stopped pseudo eves which is really really bad for certain players.

Don't force us into bad towns with wells.

Yes, it could increase with well level.
Basiclaly a well would block only 40 tiles around it, so the faster family gets the well.
Then a deep well would block 80 around it, not on instant, would block upgrade. SO they basically could use up the water but couldn't upgrade further, as there is already a well made faster before that. It also could lose the water if not used up within 30 minutes.

This could also be limited, if a family dies and no one sees the well for x minutes, then it goes dry allowing other places to make a well.
When you got 25 ish wells per arc, it isn't hard to track those specific spots activity.
Maybe clean your well every 30 minutes to keep it active, similar to tree planting, not a major issue. Still if someone wants to make a new well, then has a chance.

Newcommen wells could block out a  bigger radius, like 160. Then the engine wells clear a whole sector of 354x354 aka from their side to the center, allowing 4 engine wells on 4 directions of map.

There could be a family limit to make a well, so you would basically make one well and then you couldn't use a shovel anymore on the springs, so best option would be finding someone who does it for you. I guess twin Eves can do that but generally others can't really.

The other option would be water usage check on each 4 quadrants. Once people use the wells too much, it would be a drough. That quadrant wouldn't have water for 15 min? That would knock out a spring on the edge of quadrant which is furthest from civilization. And that couldn't be used for the end of the arc. Slowly would dry out the quadrant and would be like a game of GO, at the end if there are 2 towns one of them would need to go for war with all others, not server wide just quadrant wide.

The other option could be aquaducts or ditches digged, more like fences, lay down pipes udnerneath the fault lines (and vertical lines) to conduct the spring water  from that spring to another well. This spider webs of water would empty other springs for good, and if there is no more springs around, they would dry out for good, if there are they could be used as a connection.

I want to make a new town at least in other quadrant far from other cities and don't stay inside the same place all my lives.

The cleaning of well could happen more often as the other towns use water around you, meaning that only actively used wells would get cosntant water, and all others would have to do some work before they get access tto their own wells. Dump some material into well, like limestone, then after 5 min it allows using the well for 15 min, rinse repeat until you stop other wells or your town dies off.

And as fugg says, the rift could be more compact, i don't mind the size, still not big, but having less empty tiles with the same amout of trees, iron and oil would be just the same, distance is generally only a problem to gathering, if there are 100 trees in your 50x50 or there are 200 trees in your 100x100, cities tend to gather only 50-80 tiles around.
A compact map with lot of stones, trees would look and feel better than a big empty world.This might block off some areas of the map but that seems ok to some extent.

Eve window is fine, we Europeans barely get enough Eve time as the arc ends with griefers, so it ends on american time and it's weird time to build towns at night when you can't go back anyway. And this makes arks a timed event, seriously each 2 days the arc is dead and reset wipes all progrees, i already feel like not worth playing when im 1 day late and 1 day left of it.

Last edited by pein (2019-10-25 13:38:42)


https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7986 livestock pens 4.0
https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4411 maxi guide

Playing OHOL optimally is like cosplaying a cactus: stand still and don't waste the water.

Offline

#11 2019-10-26 20:05:38

Glassius
Member
Registered: 2018-04-22
Posts: 326

Re: What this specific arc has taught us.

It's hilarious how Jason is not keeping his own promises regarding game design. It gives me hope, as he basically has implemented most of my suggestions, only twisting the original mechanics and balance :) It happened with multistep cooking, with medicine, with more violence options (even if swords are twisted so much my proposition could not work). Now it happened with phantoms, invisible objects utilizing to interactions between players.

Jason, drying out springs are the equivalent of red wires from Minecraft, something you promised you will never implement :)

Hereby, another suggestion for water management. Do not prohibit building wells (in free place, dry pond, spring, doesn't matter). Make water a global resource. When well timer runs out, it is requesting the next unity of water. It is granted by probability engine basing on remaining not full wells in the world. It can be different timer basing on technological advancement.

Chance to get water = 1/number of not full wells

If timer were quite high, like 2-20 seconds, the first few wells would provide gigantic amounts of water. But every next well would downgrade all other existing wells. Abandoned wells would fill up eventually and not affect others.

Advantages over current system:
1. It still allows for Eve camps or outposts, as new digged shallow and deep well will start full of water.
2. Water becomes a resource villages may compete for. A raid to destroy/downgrade neighbouring well makes sense.
3. There would exists some wells surrounded by abandoned settlement, so exploring for them may be lifesaver.

System is easy and global. Tweaking timers would be the only thing necessary to tweak difficulty, making it more balanced with each arc.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB